Season 2018

Motocross was Mikko Markkula’s first love before the co-driving bug bit, but when it did, he threw himself at the task 100 per cent.

Before he took part in his first rally in 2000, he had already completed five years of intensive training alongside Finnish drivers and co-drivers such as Risto Mannisenmaki and Timo Rautiainen.

He took part on his first World Rally Championship event one year later and was runner-up in the Finnish Championship in 2002. By 2005 he was a WRC regular alongside Janne Tuohino in a Skoda Motorsport Fabia.

A partnership with Juho Hanninen began in 2007 and culminated in the pair winning the Intercontinental Rally Challenge crown with Skoda in 2010.

They were beaten in the two following seasons by fellow Skoda driver Andreas Mikkelsen, who in 2013 asked Markkula to join him on his debut season with Volkswagen.

The pair claimed third in the drivers’ championship and finished second at Rally Sweden in 2014 before cracks in the partnership began to show. After five rounds in 2014, Markkula and Mikkelsen stopped competing together citing ‘personal differences’.

There were wins in WRC 3 and WRC 2 that first season, and in 2016 they narrowly missed out on the WRC 2 title. After two standout performances in a Fiesta World Rally Car in 2017, the pair will contest an eight-round World Rally Car programme with M-Sport Ford World Rally Team in 2018.